Today I was feeling melancholic.
It wasn’t that something particular had gone wrong or that I was even dealing with that all too regular dysthymic dip caused by the ebb and flow of hormonal shifts. It wasn’t anything terribly tangible. And really, if you think about it, there shouldn’t be much cause to be a little down. It is less than a week from Christmas. It is a Saturday morning. My coffee is fresh and my pets are more than happy to love me unconditionally.
It is always difficult deciding what to do with a Saturday. Do I catch up on all the rest I missed during that intense blast of work and duty we call the Business week? This is an option I often take, but frustratingly, when I sleep in, I often feel afterward that the indulgent gulp of sleep I fed upon has robbed me of rare and precious moments of free time. Sleeping in on a weekend is needed, but then I realize I have no more cake.
Ought I do all of the chores that couldn’t be done during the previous marathon of days? This is usually a good option for me, or at least the duty in me is always saying so. A very real example is the state of my now withered garden and the fact that someone needs to go clean it all up. The reality of this season is that the only time which permits me to be outside when the sun is up is on the weekend. Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year and it hasn’t been light after I have gotten off of work in several months. There is so much catch-up work to do, and this is likely my last time to handle it for several Saturdays. Then there are dishes and laundry and 2 dirty bathrooms and animal hair on every surface. Failure to complete this unending list of work will mean a sinking guilt, a doubtfulness which accuses me of being an imposter of an adult. These are the basic things, the bare minimum if you will. These are the things by which even the sweetest of friends use to assess your character, even if they are too polite to say so out loud. Having the pile of work complete gives the sweetest rest, but when I am too tired to do the work, even the resting is not restful.
Let me not even get into the guilt of not spending enough time in prayer, in reading the Bible, in volunteering at church, in mentoring. This is a duty which takes a lifetime in and of itself. Pursuing this with one’s whole heart can often eschew all activity of any other kind with the frantic call of the Great Commission. The hardest part about this guilt is that even the most thorough use of time here is never enough. There will always be someone more pious to show you how you are not doing enough, reading enough, abiding enough, giving enough. And after doing all you can to just be obedient to God, one realizes that they have not pursued any other passions in years (Passions that were by no means sinful, but rather expressions of God-given creativity). Yes, this has happened to me and I am on a journey of recovery.
So, what does one do on a Saturday? I think I often squander my time because I cannot decide between the working and the resting. The result is this unfulfilling, itchy, inefficient puttering (Not to say that I am lazy or unproductive or slovenly). The problem is that in this manic rush to get the best usage of time I tend to sacrifice all activities to the possibility of doing all others. Like water on a high hill, too often I roll to the lowest level. Exhaustion and loneliness likewise do nothing to combat the strong pull of entropy. I think for me this often means endless scrolling on my phone, looking at memes that are amusing momentarily, ignoring political posts that are too stressful to internalize, and looking longingly at others’ artwork- brilliant accomplishments which I am too inhibited to go and make for myself.
Of course, sometimes I escape the aforementioned trap. But not often enough. The knowledge of this tendency causes a very genuine sense of uneasiness. I feel that I am wasting away my youth, failing to be productive, and torpedoing one creative effort for a fear of failing to pursue another. I think this is a proof for the eternity of the human soul. No matter how much I do, there is never enough time or resource to do what my soul needs to do. Feelings like this remind me of the promise of heaven, of an eternal amount of time without worry.
Eternity with the Lord who made us
added to a fullness of knowledge,
Uninhibited souls free of sin
living life abundant and eternal
What did I decide to do today? I tried the balanced approach- something which I am rarely disciplined enough to try. I showered, I did the dishes, I started 1 load of laundry, I cleaned some dead fall out of the garden. Interspersed between the duty, I did some reading. I read a short story that a friend beautifully wrote, finished the last 3 chapters of Screwtape Letters (which has been hanging over me for 4 months), and cracked open the most intimidating thing of all- a book of poetry.
I have deftly avoided poetry for most of my life. Some people are skilled athletes or musicians. I am skilled at staying as far away from poetry as possible. Today, I stood staring at this thin, attractive book by Wendell Berry, and I just had to ask why. Why did I dislike poetry so vehemently?
I remember my high school English classes pretty well. They were long, dry classes filled with mountains of books I had no desire in reading. I remember the odious pattern in which we were all forced to write- the Jane Schaffer method. For those of you lucky enough not to know the pattern, thank God!
Topic Sentence
Concrete Statement
2 supporting sentences
Lather rinse repeat
As a highly creative person generally, with a predisposition to verbosity, I struggled heavily with this. I perpetually felt that I was not allowed the freedom to say what I actually wanted to say. This led to a petrified pen. I was rarely satisfied with my writing in these classes. It was just so cumbersome and dry. Plain, ugly, repressed. Add to this frustration the highly politicized pressure to read (and analyze to death) “Literature”. These books were sometimes classics, but were more often best-sellers of the worst kind. They held terrible stories of tortured people living according to destructive philosophies, which were written by authors more miserable than the monstrosities they forced upon good paper. It was modern and post-modern crap, penned by people who gloriously achieved their need to be important and respected amongst the sycophantic idiots who were as spiritually and emotionally broken as they. The experience was torturous, and I really grew to despise “Literature”. I grew to hate analyzing writing, and I grew to hate reading this oft obscene variety. I developed this stubborn rule of thumb- that the best reading was just for a good plot and the best books were merely meant to be enjoyed. It is no surprise, therefore, that I naturally fell into a disdain of contemplative reading.
Reading in general has been a struggle of mine. It’s not that I can’t understand words or that I can’t read fast enough. I’m sure I’m average at all that. Rather, as a highly creative person I have often chosen to use free time to go create something. I sew, I draw, I paint, I garden. Etc. etc. I thank the Lord above for the advent of podcasts and audio books, for, without them I would have missed out on even more writing. Now I can absorb long novels and finish the painting (assuming I actually undertook either venture).
For all the words I used to set up this internal journey- what’s the point?
Time
Time is the whole point. As I sat laboring over this book of poems, I realized the whole point of poetry (Or if not the whole point, then perhaps a very significant point). I had to lay down my time in order to delve into the beautiful thoughts of someone else. And, not being good at understanding these works of art quickly, I had to read and reread them. For some it took me 3 or 4 passes to grasp the meaning. It took effort and patience in order to unravel the mystery of a small thought, something that hardly took up hardly any space on the already small leaf of an already small book. After laboring for several minutes to understand the point of one poem, I might at last come to realize that the thought was so simple- life is short, snow is beautiful, beer is good, people are crazy.
Well.
Why couldn’t they just say that and be on with it?
Why spend hours crafting together 3 sentences to express what is obvious to everyone?
Why can’t I figure out why they chose these particular line breaks?
Why doesn’t any of this rhyme?
Why did I spend 5 minutes of my weekend decoding this?
Ah. Yes. It all came down to time for me. I am so accustomed to the eternal scrolling. You know the scrolling. Choose your app, but the scrolling never ends. Ironically, by now I will have posted these thoughts on your favorite social medium and you will likely have scrolled right past it- because reading something long takes… time.
I spend a lot of time going through literal miles of online content. Some of it is really funny or informative, but a lot of it is just digital cotton candy. Hardly any of it is substantive or edifying. The habit nevertheless persists. I have become accustomed to infinite content flying at me. I am used to seeing something, laughing, reacting, reposting, and then moving on to the next thing. Every emotion is extreme, every feeling exaggerated, until the meaning of loving and laughing are mere shadows of the real thing.
Let me make an aside about online content. As an artist who is trying to sell their work, I know that most practical place to sell is online. In order to make a big enough splash to be noticed, one has to be skilled at the art they create, and also pay homage to the algorhythm gods (I say so not because I serve them but because online success is as enigmatically pagan as giving up one’s first born to make it rain). One of the major keys to online success is constant content creation. Depending on the platform, this means between 5 posts a week to 3 posts a day- all for the chance that the right person will look at it for half a second. That’s right. .5 seconds. Marketing tells us that it also takes repeated exposure for that content to be remembered. This means billions of people posting things they might not otherwise post so that the other billions of people can maybe see the one thing that they really meant for them to see all along (and then hope it is good enough even to be remembered). It’s exhausting to do and it is exhausting to see. I truly hate it. I mean truly. But what is the alternative? That no one ever sees (and therefore never buys) my art? Sigh… Here’s my soul. Where do I sign?
Digression over.
I used to hate the concept of eternity. I didn’t understand it and it made me feel so small and therefore it scared me terribly. Now, I still don’t understand it and it is still frightening, but I have often tricked myself into thinking I can somehow absorb it. Not consciously, but rather quite unconsciously, I think my body truly believes it can read all of facebook, peruse each painting on Instagram, try every pinterest recipe, watch every show on Netflix, and see each meme on ifunny. I know I never will, yet why am I always trying to do it? Why have I striven so hard to enjoy a farce of eternity when the real thing is so near at hand. But I guess that’s the thing. I am not striving for these things at all. Quite the opposite is true. These things are striving for me. I hardly want to see all this content, yet it claws its way to me and takes up root like a cancer.
What person these days reads the same 3 lines of anything over and over? What person takes the time they do not have to experience the art of a simple thought shrouded in words? Who of us truly slow down to absorb something simple and good and true? I for one can hardly remember the last time I actually read an article carefully through rather than skimming it. After all, I am perpetually late. Late, for a very important date.
Today I discovered something profound. As much as I hated to labor for it, poetry brought me a human experience today that I needed. Poetry is choppy and odd. It is unpredictable and elusive. The sequencing is difficult to grasp, and about the time I think I’ve learned the trick, the next poem is entirely different. But, each poem is about something. Each poem was made by a human mind that saw something in this world worth expressing. At the same time, the thing was too big or too small or too otherworldly to just say outright. Instead, these things that they saw and felt and understood had to be written in a way that defied the laws of writing and could never be held in one universal format. The concept itself was not linear, but elegant and elusive. At some point I joined it, participated with, and dwelt with those thoughts.
I’m not saying all poetry is divine or ought to be worshipped. What I am saying is subtler. Perhaps the vastness of the everything becomes as meaningless as nothing. Perhaps the vastness of small things holds the meaning for more things. Perhaps spending more time on less rather than the reverse will actually yield a glimpse of the inner peace for which my heart desperately longs. That hope in me which knows there is an eternity to come, might rest better now in dealing with the beauty of a few finite things. As an eternal creature made for eternal things, I will never stop yearning for transcendence. But didn’t God know such things when He placed me in finite skin for a finite time? Did God really mean for me to be all, do all, see all, know all? I can hardly think He did, for wasn’t such a venture part of the sin of Adam?
I’m not God.
I am exhausted by the mere thought of trying to be like God.
But here’s the thing. God doesn’t make us reach up to Him. On the contrary, He has made us for Himself and our hearts are desperate until they find their rest in Him. God put us on this earth, telling us to live and multiply. When there became a chasm of separation between us, He didn’t force humanity to make a bridge and come crawling back. God Himself became the bridge and He walked across the bridge and came to get us. He doesn’t demand of us a striving for perfection, but rather confers upon us His own likeness. In this fallen form and in this fallen place, He calls this redemption abundant life. We don’t deserve it and can barely understand it. Nevertheless, it is true.
So today I was feeling melancholic,
and I chose to do a little living
and I chose to do a little reading
and I chose to do a little thinking
and I chose a little quiet.
Something came to meet me,
just some thoughts about some things
just some words by some old man
just a few fragmented stanzas
just a taste of eternity.
